Some time ago, I wrote a fairly standard film review blog. I stopped because I didn’t get a lot of views for it (though it was worryingly popular in Russia) and the views I did get made it abundantly clear that people only really wanted to see me rag on bad films. No hard feelings though. That’s the way it goes.
But honestly, I was getting bored of being mean.
I do still enjoy writing about film though. And the lack of views isn’t something that ever really bothered me that much. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love it if people wanted to read what I write and I’d love it even more if there was some interaction with it, but I don’t need that to motivate the creative urge. If anything, not acting on it has been way less healthy for me over the past few years.
Which leads me to this. It’s Revived! Like I said, the whole “people only want to see bad reviews” is something that I totally get. I’m as guilty as the rest, but what if I want to take the bad films and put a positive spin on them? Basically, can I have my cake and eat it?
So, this isn’t a film review blog. This is a film-fixing blog. Every fortnight, I will take a film that failed for whatever reason (God knows I’m not going to be running out of ammunition any time soon) and see if I can work out how that film could have succeeded. But, to stop me banging on too long, I’ve got to see if I can do it with only 5 changes.
There are some other rules that I’m putting on myself here.
- Any changes I make must be feasible ones. No utilising of special effects that weren’t available. No re-casting choices that couldn’t feasibly have happened. Daniel Day-Lewis as Mr Freeze isn’t happening. Not to say that’s a good idea either though.
- The essence of what was trying to be achieved must remain intact. I can’t go and turn Norbit into a horror movie (partly because you could argue it already is one). Nor can I change the fact that The Chronicles of Riddick was trying to go epic (I know some like it, but the saner of us don’t). This is about whether what was being attempted could have worked.
- Things that happened after the film came out also cannot be accounted for. If future-events rendered a scene no longer as effective; not allowed to change it. Likewise, if a cast member was later found out to have done less than savoury things, I can’t recast on that basis if it wasn’t known before then. So, basically, I can’t remove James Franco from everything he was ever in just because of what came out about him. But I can remove James Franco from films because he wasn’t any good in them to begin with.
There you have it. The concept. The rules. And yes, some awareness that there’s probably dozens of people already doing similar things out there already.
We begin this Wednesday.
It's Revived! 